96 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
with the rise of the monarchy, “the theocratic principle begins to lose its compre-
hensive power and to be limited to the merely-religious in order finally merely
to provide the intangible shielding of autocracy, as in Egypt and Babylon.” Here
again is the Reichsdialektik: the Sabaean ritual proclaims their god as real king
and simultaneously weakens this rulership through the institution of a human
kingship. “If anywhere,” Buber asserts, “there is world-history in such an event,
in which the problematics of the relation between religion and politics assumes
its climactic manifestation.”^48
Having presented the three cases, Buber claims that they have served his
dual purpose. On the one hand, they show that the idea of a kingship of God
was not merely a vague formula but denoted a real political relationship between
heaven and earth: “In Egypt he is first only the primeval king who, withdrawn
into heaven, holds his protecting and guiding hand over his human followers. In
Babylon he looks down upon his regent as though examining the guardian of his
law and, if it must be, ready to judge him. In South Arabia, he is constitutionally
related to his people, founder and partner of the covenant on whose fulfillment
the preservation of the commonwealth hangs.” On the other hand, Buber argues
that other Near Eastern cultures did not conceive this relationship in the same
way as did Israel, as “immediate, unmetaphorical, unlimitedly real,” and thus
that, despite the influence of other cultures on the Israelites as they moved into
Canaan, “the kingship of God is not to be derived from this influence.”^49 At this
point Buber has laid the groundwork for his real interest: the Semitic case.
The West Semitic Tribal God: On Baal and M-L-K
Buber comes to address the linguistic-historical significance of the Semitic root
m-l-k, which overlays a field of terms related to kingship in the Phoenician, Ara-
maean, Ammonite, Moabite, Israelite, and Arabian languages. His main interest
is in its specific function, as distinguished from that of el or baal. This is the point
in Kingship of God at which Buber most combines his own research and experi-
ence in biblical Hebrew with the history-of-religions paradigm, acknowledging
the powers attributed by ancient peoples to earth and sky, fertility and magic, and
the various ways people conceive of themselves in relation to all the mysterious
forces at work in the world.
Buber first distinguishes the term el from baal and malk. El denotes naked
potency, pure divine efficacy, experienced as part of one’s regular contact with
nature and the world, whereas baal and malk indicate “in which respect a po-
tency is potent and in which way.” Baal is what Buber describes as “encountered
divinity,” a manifold power met with in a particular place and providing for the
fruitfulness of that place by mating with consorts. Malk, in contrast, is the singu-
lar god of the tribe, the god of wandering, “the accompanying god” who helps the
tribe realize its own unity, increase its own power, and succeed in all efforts. Baal